Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: Drawing on research conducted in 26
countries, the report assesses a number
of issues: Child Soldiers, Refugees,
Police Abuse and Arbitrary Detention of
Street Children, Children in Conflict
with the Law, Orphanages and Abandoned
Children, Child Labour, Sexual Abuse
and Trafficking, Education
Child Soldiers: 300,000 children in more than thirty countries are
participating in armed conflicts, serving on the front lines of
combat, as spies, messengers, porters and human mine detectors, and
suibject to injury, disability, psychological trauma and death.
Refugees: Children make up over half of the world's refugees. They
are also subject to hazardous labour exploitation, physical abuse,
denial of education, sexual violence and exploitation, cross-border
attacks and recruitment as child soldiers.
Police Abuse and Arbitrary Detention of Street Children: Street
children throughout the world are subjected to routine harassment and
physical abuse by police, government and private security forces, who
seek to clean the streets if a perceived social blight. Street
children face extortion, theft, severe beatings, mutiliation, sexual
abuse and even death.
Children in Conflict with the Law: Children are often denied due
process, are physically abused or tortured while in state custody,
and subjected to appalling conditions of confinement. Six countries,
including the United States, are known to have executed juvenile
offenders in the past decade.
Orphanages and Abandoned Children: Hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of children are kept in orphanages and non-penal
institutions, after being orphaned or abandoned. In some cases, such
children are deprived of adequate food and basic medical care, an
adequate education, and subjected to appalling levels of cruelty and
sometimes daily neglect.
Child Labour: 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 work
in developing countries. Nearly half work full-time and have little
or no access to education. Child labourers may be chained to carpet
looms, work in the field sixteen hours a day, or be hidden away as
domestic servants, earning little and often physically abused.
Sexual Abuse and Trafficking: An unknown but very large number of
children are used for commercial sexual purposes every year, often
ending up victims of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted
diseases. Prostituted children can be raped, beaten sodomized,
emotionally abused, tortured, and even killed by pimps.
Education: 130 million children in 1998 had no access to basic
education, and millions of others received little or substandard
instruction. In many countries, ethnic minorities and girls are
denied an adequate education, and in poor or rural areas, prohibitive
school fees may keep many children out of school.